What is Insanely Important
Update: 2016-10-16
Description
Acts 4:1-37
Celebration Guide
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Notes
What are the insanely important things in the life of Crosswalk Community Church?
Celebration Guide
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Notes
- Things that stand out in Acts: None of the sermons ever preached in Acts were ever prepared.
- What are the top 3 things that are insanely important to me right now? Don't give the typical 'Sunday-school' answer.
- "Truly I know that it is so: But how can a man be in the right before God?" (Job 9:2). This is an insanely important question.
- We will look at 10 things that are insanely important in Scripture and for the book of Acts.
What are the insanely important things in the life of Crosswalk Community Church?
- (1) The Person, Jesus Christ. He is top of the list.
- (2) We are gospel-infused. These top two should feed everything we do around Crosswalk; Christ is to be exalted, and the gospel is to be proclaimed. *The best church growth strategy ever written: Jesus said "If I be lifted up, I will draw all men to me." Everything we do at Crosswalk must be gospel-infused (i.e. pastoral ministry, deacon ministry, Operation Christmas Child, children's ministry, youth ministry, bread ministry, local and global outreach ministries, prayer ministry, etc.)
- (3) Great grace. What made the early church so great was great power and great grace.
- (4) Growing faith. The object of our faith is what it's all about! Church is so important because we get to grow in our faith! Every aspect of our church should be feeding our faith. "Without faith, it is impossible to please the heart of God."
- (5) Extravagant worship. Crosswalk does this very well! This is strongly connected to God being glorified and the manifested presence of God in the room. Sometimes we are more extravagant with buildings, budgets, and baptisms than the gospel. This ought not to be so! We need to continue being extravagant in our worship. "Missions exist because worship doesn't." –John Piper
- (6) God's glory. Our hearts have the tendency to be glory-hijackers. We want to add to the gospel. We take all our merit and efforts and we try to add them to the doctrine of justification. This robs God of his glory. The works that are done in us through the power of the Holy Spirit are evidence of our salvation, not the basis of our salvation. Stop fighting your sin and lean into God's greater grace, humbly go to him in prayer and say, "God, I'm struggling with sin and it's greater than me." Sin is fought in the atonement of Christ!
- (7) Missional culture. We can't help but seeing in Acts that the early church gathered to scatter. This is different from many American churches today. They gather to become larger. The missional church gathers to scatter.
- (8) Empowering prayer. Why does the church culture in America today not experience empowering prayer? Love! Take somebody you love with all your heart and you talk to them. When our love grows cold, we stop talking to the person we love. The reason we are not praying is that we are not loving at the level God loves.
- (9) We are Presence-Driven. We believe in the omnipresence of God, and we also believe in the manifest presence of God. People were drawn to the early church because of the manifest presence of God.
- (10) Communal Life. Learning to do life together. A divided church is a weakened church. When the Person Jesus Christ is our priority, division has a hard time getting in. When Jesus is not our main priority, division is already there.
- Acts 4: How intent were the early church leaders on the Person, Jesus Christ?
- Acts 4:7, 10, 12, 17-18
- Acts 4:12-13 "And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved. Now when they saw that the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated, common men, they were astonished. And they recognized that they had been with Jesus."
- Do we have insane boldness like these apostles? If not, we must ask ourselves, "Have I spent time with Jesus?"
- verse 20: "For we cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard." If you want to see the persecution in your life lessen, begin to worship. Your worship is doing more than what you know.
- 2 Questions for us in response:
- (1) How are things between you and Jesus right now? On a scale from 1-10.
- (2) Do people recognize that you and I have spent time with Jesus?
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